Middle Earth? What, are you INSANE?
by Frozen-Minnesotan
Summary: Aubry and Beth, two average 15 year olds from Minnesota, discover living life with their favorite characters, especially hot elves, is gonna be more fun than they thought it would be. 10th 11th walker.


Ok, today was most defiantly not going well.

First off, it was cold. Second, it was cloudy and looked like it was about to pour down rain at any second. Thirdly, my best friend and I were OUTSIDE in this weather and lastly, the simple fact that we were BORED OUT OF OUR SKULLS! We were so bored that we felt that we were soon going to be sent to the nut farm tied up in a sack. Right now we were wandering around in that cold, trying desperately to find something to do.

At first we had been in my warm, cozy house, explaining exactly how MUCH we were bored to each other, when suddenly my mom had decided that today would be a great day for a picnic. I believe her exact words were, "Get out of the house this INSTANT and don't come back until you're about to die of starvation." What a loving, caring mother I have.

So here we were, wandering around in the spooky woods by my house, trying to find an abandoned old cottage that could possibly contain a couple of ghosts, or at least a decomposing pirate corpse with a map to a cursed treasure.

We had been searching for the last hour and a half, only to find the same thing that we had found at the beginning of our little expedition. Zip, Zilch, Nada. The only thing we could possibly gain from this experience was the knowledge that this God forsaken flock of trees was about as interesting as the weather channel.

I stopped my search and glanced around. All I could see was a lot of bramble and tons of trees. Not one creepy looking house in sight.

"OH MY GAWD! This is the most uninteresting patch of land in the whole mid-western United States!"

Beth, as my pale-skinned companion like to be called, rolled her eyes at me as she watched me scream to the heavens, and brushed her curly black hair out of her face as a freezing wind blew through the trees.

She glanced around at something behind my back and then started to dig around in a tall wall of shrubs she had noticed. I watched her working for a few minutes, wondering if she had suddenly gone crazy from boredom. She glanced over at me and sighed dramatically.

"Come over here and help me look! I think I saw something between these bushes when the wind blew through."

I shrugged my shoulders, set our hiking packs down and meandered over to the bushes to help Beth look.

We had been digging through these branches for the last 5 minutes, a mumbled string of curses coming from my portion of the bush, when Beth decided to shriek loudly. I shot my head up, hitting my head on a stray branch and causing me to hiss in pain. Then, guessing I hadn't heard her shriek, Beth started to hit the one thing that wasn't covered in bush, which just so happened to be my left foot.

"OW! Beth, what the NUTCRACKER!" I pulled myself back out of the Shrubbery of Doom and glared at my black-haired cohort. She was grinning like a maniac and squealed loudly.

"OH MY GAWD, you have GOT to SEE THIS!" she motioned for me to follow her and then started making her way back through the evil plant.

"Beth, wait! What are you even DOING?" she didn't answer so I grabbed the packs and picnic basket Beth had left behind and started in after her.

I pushed the bags out in front of me and moved toward the light I had seen Beth disappear out of. 'Wait a minute, how could there be a light at the end? It's been cloudy all day…'

I grumble out curses as I hit my knees against roots and rocks sticking out of the ground and when branches got stuck on the bags and snapped off of the shrub I hissed out some more words that I knew. Basically, I was making as much noise as humanly possible.

I saw a shadow cover up the hole at the end as Beth looked in to make sure I was all right and that I wasn't being beat up by some wild gang of pigs. "Aubry! Hurry it up in there! And why don't you make it even louder, I don't think the rabid animals 5 miles away can hear you!" I mumbled louder and Beth laughed lightly.

I finally made it to the end, pushed the bags out and climbed out myself. Right then and there I decided to NEVER follow Beth through any more vicious plant life. I picked some twigs out of my hair, which I swear hissed at me, and concluded that the first course of action was to glare at the person that put me through all of this trouble. So I glanced up at my ex-best friend and scowled at her perky little face.

"Hamwich, why the hell did you drag me in here? That evil bush tried to KILL ME!" She just grinned wider and gestured around.

"LOOK at this place Aubry! Don't you think this was worth it?" I finally took a good look at the niche we had crawled into and decided it most defiantly was.

We were sitting in a large circular garden filled with flowers and plants of every shape and size. White, cobblestone walkways crisscrossed the enclosure; all sweeping and curving around the flowerbeds, leading from the hedge that surrounded the place to the very center where a large, marble fountain stood. Behind the fountain was a beautiful wooden gazebo, one of the most amazing structures I had ever seen.

I stood up beside Beth and stared. "This is so beautiful." I heard Beth whisper.

'How the heck did this get in my backyard?' I thought to myself as I gazed around at the amazing garden.

Beth walked over to one of the paths and started to study a tall, pure white flower. "Hey Aubry, This is really weird. I've never seen a flower like this before." I walked over and started paying closer attention to the plants.

"Um, Beth, I've never seen ANY of these plants before. Which leads me to the question, who the heck is planting rare flowers in a secret garden in MY backyard? I happen to know that anything green within 100 feet of my family dies almost immediately. I'm the only person that can plant anything and I'm positive I didn't do all this."

I started to wander along the walkway toward the gazebo, gazing at the small stream that trickled along beside me and wondered who had made this place. Beth eventually caught up with me, carrying the picnic basket and our hiking bags.

"Here, take your bag. It's heavier than my bag and the basket combined" I took my back from her and lugged it over my shoulder.

'Ugh, she's right. Maybe I shouldn't have brought all that extra stuff.'

We walked over to the fountain and looked inside to find koi fish swimming around under a bunch of lily pads the gardener had placed in the water.

'Amazing!' I thought, watching the fish swim under some lilies, 'This place is warmer and sunnier than outside! How did that happen? Magic?'

I watched as Beth stuck her fingers into the fountain to touch the fish, amazed as the fish swam right up to her hand.

"These are some really well trained fish! And what's with this weather? Did you notice that this is the first time it's been sunny all day?" Beth gazed around and nodded in agreement.

"Something is really weird about this place. I don't know if we should be in here, Aubry…" She glanced at me, asking me silently if we should leave.

"No, I think it's ok. I don't know how to explain this but it feels like something's calling me here. Like something I need is missing…" I looked around, fingering a strand of hair that had fallen over my shoulder.

Beth glanced at me, obviously wondering if I was doing drugs of some sort, when she got a far away look on her face.

"You know what? I have that feeling too. Like a piece of your heart is missing, or like there's been a hole in you your whole life."

I nodded slightly and then headed for the gazebo, feeling rather than hearing that Beth was right behind me. 'It's here, somewhere in this garden.'

I walked up the large marble steps and stepped onto the wooden floor of the structure, pushing back ivy that had grown over the doorway. When I saw what was inside the building I nearly gasped in awe.

"This is like a plant sanctuary in here!" Beth murmured in astonishment, fingering a leafy stalk that was growing in a planter by the archway.

This was like my dream come true. I loved sitting out in gardens, reading on the grass or just listening to the trees whisper in the wind, and I was always looking for the perfect spot to hide away from the world. Most of the time I sat down on the roots of an old oak tree that suspended over a small river running through my backyard. Now I had a secret garden, a place only Beth knew about.

"This place is so AWESOME!" I squealed, looking around at Beth and almost hugging her. She laughed and started drifting around the greenhouse, looking at all the amazing new plants.

"You know what?" she said as she watched a butterfly land on a small, lilac flower, "We should bring a camera next time and take pictures of all these flowers. We could go to the library some time and try to figure out what these plants are called."

I grinned and started walking towards the end of the sanctuary, my mind going in circles. 'What a wonderful place to be! No one here to tell you what to do and it's so warm you could sleep out here in 20-degree weather and still be totally comfortable! That would be great for the days I get in fights with my parents…'

I smirked at the thought of seeing my parents' faces when I just got up and walked out into the piling snow. Beth glanced over at me and slowly began to back away when she saw my expression.

"Aubry, what are you thinking about? You only have that smirk when you're thinking of doing something nasty." She stopped a couple of feet back and watched as I hummed thoughtfully and shrugged my shoulders.

"I have no idea what you're talking about Hamwich. I'm not thinking of doing anything at all." I grinned playfully at her and ran ahead, missing Beth's sigh of disbelief.

'This is gonna be more fun than I thought!' I mused, darting down the path and glancing over my shoulder a couple of times to see Beth right behind me and gaining.

I put on an extra burst of speed and headed for the back of the gazebo, passing some more water fountains and a couple of benches before final catching a glimpse of the back wall.

'Wow, this place is way bigger than it looked like from the front. I wonder how that happened? I guess I can't call this a gazebo anymore…'

'Come to me, Watcher, and take what is yours.' I skidded to a halt, catching Beth off guard and sending us both tumbling to the ground. Picking myself up quickly, I glanced around the greenhouse, trying to catch a sign of the person I had heard. Pushing herself up off the marble walkway and rubbing the bruises she had acquired, Beth glanced around too and, when seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she turned on me. "AUBRY, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING! YOU JUST ABOUT KILLED BOTH OF US! NEXT TIME, HOW ABOUT A BIT OF A WARNING BEFORE YOU STOP SUDDENLY!" I glared over at my shrieking companion and put my hand over her mouth, listening for the voice again.

"Hello!?" I shouted, earning a weird look from Beth, who was struggling to free her mouth so she could yell at me some more, "Is anyone in here with us? I heard you before, but what do you want? What do you mean what is mine?" I listened intently for a couple of minutes before dropping my hand off Beth's face.

Looking at me for a couple of seconds, she decided that now wasn't the time to be yelling at me.

"Who were you talking to before? And what do you mean 'what is yours'?" I walked a couple of steps further before answering her question. "I heard this voice, telling me something. It said, 'Come to me watcher, and take what is yours', or something like that. Didn't you hear it before?" She shook her head and looked at me, puzzled.

"So you heard some strange voice in your head telling you to take something that belongs to you? What did this voice even sound like?" I thought about it for a minute, trying to remember.

"It was really old, not old as in ancient and scratchy like a grandparent's voice, but more wise and benevolent. Kinda like someone who has been living for a long, long time, but never gets any older." She regarded me for a couple of seconds before placing her hand on my forehead.

"I'M NOT SICK BETH! And I'm not crazy either! I know I heard something!" Beth sighed and dropped her hand.

"Aubry, you heard a voice that no one else can hear. That's not something that normally happens to people." She gazed at me again before heading back toward the way we came.

"Come on, Let's get out of here. This weather is obviously getting to your hea…" I watched as she stopped mid-sentence, stiffened and glanced around. Turning to glare at me, she frowned and put her hands on her hips.

"Ha…Ha… very funny, Aubry." I looked at her quizzically, wondering what the heck she was talking about.

"What? I didn't do anythi…" she cut me off, walking forward and poking me in the chest.

"Don't even say you didn't do anything. You said something to me in that creepy voice, trying to get me back for saying you were crazy. Well, I'm just worried about you and you shouldn't do something like that to me when I'm worried…" She scowled at me, daring me to say anything to the contrary.

I stepped away from her and sighed. "Beth, I didn't say anything. You were walking away, stopped mid-sentence and then started yelling at me! What the heck happened?"

Beth stood there, staring at me with a shocked look on her face. She slowly turned around and gazed at the beautiful flowers.

"What is wrong with us?" Beth whispered, hiding her face behind her hands. I walked up and faced her, trying to calm my own fears.

"Beth, what did you hear?" She looked up at me, whipping unshed tears from her eyes.

"I heard a voice, calling to me. It told me to find it, find the thing I had lost. I want to follow it Aubry! I want to find the thing that is missing! But should we really listen to voices in our heads?" I moaned, wishing that I had some aspirin.

"I have no idea what we should do, but I feel like we should find what was lost. We should at least go see what it is anyway. What would be the harm if we just went to see what it was? We don't have to take it if we don't want to, so we can decide what to do when we get there." Beth nodded in agreement and we started heading back down the path, going in the direction our hearts told us we should go.


End file.
